611B.9417/103
Memorandum by Mr. Roy Veatch of the Office of the Economic Adviser of a Conversation With the Third Secretary of the Japanese Embassy (Hayama)
Mr. Hayama telephoned during the morning and asked if he could come to see me soon to inform the Department of a message that had been received from the Japanese Consul General in Manila.
When Mr. Hayama came in he read from a Japanese memorandum which he carried of a cable which had been received from the Japanese Consul General in Manila, a copy of which had been sent by the Consul General to Tokyo. According to this cable, the Philippine Secretary of Finance (Mr. Quirino) had replied to inquiries of the “Chamber of Commerce” and other trade bodies to the effect that the Philippine statistics showed 20,034,185 square meters of Japanese cotton piece goods had been imported into the Philippines during the four-month period August–November.
The Japanese Consul General evidently had been anxious to verify these statistics and he had gone to the Philippine collector of customs and had secured from him a full statement of the statistics of arrivals [Page 1032] of Japanese cotton cloth. The Consul General reported that the collector of customs was gathering the statistics and that up to December 6 his investigations showed the following results:
| Arrivals August–November | |||
| August | 5,648,202 | square | meters |
| September | 6,296,273 | “ | “ |
| October | 5,527,695 | “ | “ |
| November | 4,373,254 | “ | “ |
| Total | 21,845,424 | “ | “ |
These figures include transshipments via Hongkong. They exclude reports which are due from the outer ports of the Philippines and also 53 cases (or orders) arrived in Manila but not yet declared, these cases having arrived as follows:—1 case in August, 6 cases in September, 8 cases in October and 38 cases in November.
I thanked Mr. Hayama for bringing this cablegram to our attention and informed him that we also had this information. I recalled the fact that I had discussed this situation briefly with Mr. Yoshizawa on December 7. I emphasized the fact that the statistics released by the Secretary of Finance in Manila were statistics of arrivals and were very much different from the regular customs statistics of imports, which were based on liquidation of duty on imports, and I told him that I thought Mr. Yoshizawa understood this fact and the difficulties created thereby. As Mr. Hayama left, I stated that we had in mind a full discussion with representatives of the Embassy as soon as we had all of our information in, which I believed would be in a very few days.